Writing

Her hands shook as they tried to light a cigarette. They were pale and tinged blue in the low light.
The bedside lamp through weak light around the room from over her shoulder. The yellow shades dusted her bare shoulders where her tatty cardigan had fallen down. Thin straps of her vest stopped the full image of her back. Freckles and small moles interrupted the smooth paleness of her skin. Marble with dark flecks rather than blue veins. Her dark hair covered her neck and gently touched her shoulders. The cigarette finally caught and she pulled in a deep breath of smoke and toxins. They calmed her and her nerves.
The sheet pooled around her. She had pulled it over her lap trying to create fake innocence after. He was lying down behind her. He could still see the lace band of her underwear. His dark, lust eyes focused on the shape of her body under perfect skin rather than her words.
“We shouldn’t have done this” she repeated.
The silence of room followed her words. She just loosely clutched the cigarette. Its white body turning ashen grey as a small ring of burning was pulled down the tower. Smoke hung around her mouth as she exhaled, hovering as though it was still being fuelled by her presence. She exhaled sharply through her nose making smokey streams.
“Aren’t you listening to me?” She turned to face him.

Anger and nervousness her perfume. Her brown doe eyes looked at him, both challenging him for an answer and fearing it. Her pink lips had lost the bright colour that lipstick had applied earlier. Smudged dark eye make-up framed her eyes standing out her marble skin. She licked her lips in nervous habit.
“It’s too late anyway.” He said using his rusty vocal chords. She looked down, frowning. He hadn’t given the answer she wanted.
“We’ve done it, we can’t undo it.” He added.

She stood up, her restlessness consuming her. Her hands fell loose to her sides, cigarette glowing but on its last legs. She glared at him looking for something that she did not find. A sigh escaped her lips and her form deflated. He just kept running his eyes over her bare form. Her bare legs that shone gently in the pale light. They were cold as the room lacked warmth. A window was cracked open on a latch to allow smoke to drift into the world. She wandered over to it and peeked behind the thin netting to glimpse the outside world. It was dark outside. The street lights over powered the stars. Only artificial brightness filled the world.
“What are we going to do?” She asked.
“Do? We’re not going to do anything?” He spat, sitting up, blocking the light. Casting a large shadow over the wall to her left.
“We’ve done this. You can’t undo what’s been done.” He ranted.
She turned away from his anger to look at the blood stain shirts on the floor. Too red, so that they would never be white and pure again. Always stained by the blood that would crackle if she reached out and grabbed the shirt.
“The two of us did this. So the two of us must live with it.” He said before slumping back.
She just kept staring at the bloody spots, forming patterns and connections. Her mind was screaming silently as her skin crawled. She pulled out another cigarette with shaky hands and lit it.

Like this:

The warm air carried the electrical smell of the night. It was dark enough so that you could not see the world around you but just enough. The stars flickered like distant candles, a shrine to lost years and future ones. The warmth of the day had subsided so that it no longer coated your skin with salt via a heavy caress. Instead the taste of future rain lingered. It may not rain tomorrow or the day after that, but as sure as the sun would rise tomorrow it would rain soon. The world is like a frog that constantly has to have moist skin otherwise it cannot breathe.
Dylan sensed all the world gave to him in the late dusk. He drank in it but his mind was far away. The alcohol that filled his veins seperated him from the world around him, acting as a buffer between reality and nerves too sharp to bear it. He felt warm, not enough to roast in his own flesh, but warm. It could be mistaken for happiness. Content, joy, or some other emotion he was missing. He didn’t care he was inbetween the world that held his body and the small piece of the stars his mind showed him. He was lying on his back in the grass. The ground was cool and all the chemicals and ills of his body seemed to seep downwards into the soil and what treasures lay beneath that.
He felt like an old scholar who looked upon the stars long before the world became anywhere near what it was today. Instead Dylan was far too drunk and lying down on the grassy verge, his foot on the pavement. Any thoughts that Dylan thought possessed philosophical depth either did not or occurred so slow that you might mistake that thoughts were carried by snails rather than nerves. He was in a nice enough area that lying here wouldn’t result in bad events unless he choked on his own vomit.
Dylan was so out of the world around him that he didn’t notice when two less drunk guys stumbled towards him. Giggling at the sight of the man passed out before him. One stage whispered to the other to keep quiet. They grabbed Dylan’s jacket that was lying a metre away from him and not on. No one would ever know why he wasn’t wearing it. They draped the jacket over him like a crude blanket. They muttered jokes about whether they should sing him a nursery rhyme or not. They wandered away from Dylan continuing their own way home.
Dylan lay there under his jacket blanket, practically dead to the world. He slept and snoozed through the night.
The cold burning sun began to rise and the world was polluted with light. The brightness dragged Dylan from his slumber now that he was not protected by his alcohol buffer.
The light burned him and movement made the inside of his head feel as though someone had taken a jack hammer to it. Groans and grunts escaped Dylan’s dry lips and his tried to remember where he was and how he got there. Thinking was like sending small electric shocks through mud. He couldn’t move and the sun was getting closer.
Memories of drunken haze fluttered through his mind. Drinks, empty glasses, singing, and someone crying. Someone crying, screaming and shouting. Dylan didn’t know why they were. Soon the shouts hurt his mind more than the sun did.

Like this:

He was looking out the kitchen window. The dirty glass separating him from the garden. Outside it was sunny, the warm rays spread themselves across the glass. Light and warmth from outside seeped in. A small smile pulled at the left side of his lip. It was early spring, the perfect time to plant out the seeds he’d spent the winter growing on the window still.

He heard the letter box swing open and be stuffed with something, probably bills. There’s always bills. He turned and walked forward. Waddling like the old man he was. His hips aching and his knees battered by age. He constantly asked himself, when did he let himself become an old man? He wasn’t there yet, but his body was slipping ahead of him.

He bent down to pick up the letters that had scattered on the mat. Muttering to himself as he did. His rough fingers traced their way across the letters. It’s always bills. Until he looked at the last letter. It had a hand written address. It was addressed to him. He looked at the scrawl trying to see if he recognised it. The curled letters brought nothing to the front of his mind. He ripped open the letter, curiosity locking it’s jaw around his mind.

As he read the letter, his insides were slowly hollowed out like his guts were hacked with broad sweeping steps. The other letters and the torn envelope fluttered to the grown like a dying butterfly. His old hands shaking with small tremors.

I’m taking your lack of reply as a hint and this shall be my last letter.

He hadn’t seen any other letters. He didn’t know the full image, the letter only providing snippets of the story. It told him enough.

Footsteps ran down the stairs heavily. The slowed as they reached the bottom and approached him.

“What’s wrong?” She asked concerned. He turned to look at her. His eyes clouded with confusion and tight tears. Her eyes fluttered down to the letter. Her eyes flew wide with panic, followed by a wave of shame. She turned and walked towards the kitchen, flying like a bird from a cat. He looked at her for a second before following. The bills left littered on the floor.

“Do you know about this?” He asked putting the letter on the table in front of her. She turned to face the window as though the letter offended her. Her silence spoke loud.

“Is it true?” He asked.

“I don’t know everything-”

“What do you know?” He cut her off. She didn’t look at him. Instead her eyes jumped around the room, never looking at anything for more than a second.

Outside a blackbird jumped around the borders, pecking at weeds. It’s beady eyes scanning for food. It pecked at the bright green, spring growth. It could barely hear the rising voices inside the house.

“You knew about all of it?!” He spat in anger and shock. Her eyes darted away.

“I -”

“You knew!” He stated the confirmation. His tone left no argument.

“Why would you keep this from me?” His voice broke as the anger couldn’t carry it to the end of the sentence and sadness and hollowness took over.

“Why?”

“We thought it would be better for -”

“Don’t fucking lie!” He said his hand slamming into the wooden table. It shook on it’s old legs a little. The letter jumped away from his hand with the movement.

“You just wanted to fucking lie to me.” He said.

“I wanted to keep you -”

“Bloody lies!” He shouted. He wanted to hear the reasons, the cover-ups, the lies. He also couldn’t stand a single word she said. Every sound from her lips hurt and bruised deeper.

A thick silence settled and smothered them. A fog that swirled in and out of their lungs. Choking her with soot from the guilt fire that blazed in her heart. Drying his throat like a desert wind. Neither spoke. He let his head drop forward. His accusing gaze falling with it too. He was too old and tired to maintain it, but it was still there. They both knew it.

He left the room, marching out with curses muttered under his breath. He strolled into the garden. The grass gently stroking his shoes. The garden around him bathing in the sun, drinking in the light like honey. He sat down on the old garden chair. It sunk and sagged under his weight.

He looked around the garden. Looking at what he had built and nurtured into reality. Potential appearing and making more potential. What is potential other than something lost. Something he always lost. The seeds wouldn’t survive in the ground, the plants would die, the flowers would stop blooming. As though his eyes gave them damnation as he looked at them.

The grass was very green, the sky was extremely blue. And it disgusted him, because he knew the truth.

Like this:

Mrs Corville lived at number 15 Denworth Street. She’d lived there for 15 years. It was the house she and her husband Michael had brought for their retirement. Leaving the big family house where they’d raised their four daughters behind for something smaller. She was now alone, having out lived her husband.

There was a primary school further up the road. Every day the children would come bumbling out and giggling as the raced around on the energy of youth. The noise was fine, the teachers were fine, the children were fine. It was the parents.

She didn’t know if all parents with small children forget how to park and basic road safety, but enough of them did. They double parked, went too fast, went when they didn’t have right of way. It was just dangerous.

They parked across her drive, whilst double parking. It was annoying, and dangerous, so she complained.

For years she complained, hoping to have some white lines or something to stop the reckless of the parents. Over the years their parking had gotten worse so she had complained more.

No white lines appeared.

Everyone on the road knew of her complaints and they agreed with her.

Still no white lines.

Mrs Corville had had a long life and that had caught up to her. She’d passed youth, and tragic death. She’d reached a die-able age, one where people have the comfort of a long and happy life to get through the mourning. All death is tragic, but some is fair and some are cruel. Old age is one of the nicer ways to die. Her heart was weak, which was ironic because her metaphorical heart was so strong.

Have the operation with a 20% survival rate or die? It’s not much of a choice. So she agreed to the operation. Whilst under she suffered a stroke, so they stopped the procedure. Mrs Corville didn’t have the 20% chance anymore. It’s funny how blunt death is.

Each daughter spent a day by her hospital bed saying their unprepared goodbyes. Full of the strong love of her weak heart. She passed away at the end of the week. It was a Friday, just after the children had been let out of school.

The house now stands empty, it will sell by the end of the month. Outside, just past the kerb on the old concrete road, they painted white lines on the road.

Like this:

Staring out into the blackness, they couldn’t help notice how black it looked. Nothingness is black.

All visible light is absorbed, tucked away or drifting without any surface to reflect off. Leaving the gaps just black.

A deep, consuming, thick and sticky black. There was nothing there. Nothing among the stars. Just gaps. Terrifying gaps that seemed to make the animal inside curl up and hiss through bared fangs that had both form and colour. They weren’t nothingness. Out there was.

There was science that could explain it all but in the obliviousness of their thoughts they couldnt help think of ideas that weren’t possible.

Could other creatures see nothingness? Humans can only see a small span of the light that fills the universe, and they can see an even smaller span with it. It’s a little torch in the big woods and its night.

Could something else look into the night sky and see something they couldn’t? Was there a creature like that on Earth? Would it be out there in the nothingness? Would it ever exist?

Nothingness was black to them. What if it was a different colour to the creature that could see it? Would they see two different skies, so far apart that the sky they saw now would be more similar to Van Gogh’s than the real thing?

Did nothingness have a different colour? And was it still as terrifying or was is warm and welcoming? Was the creature scared too?